SOURCE: "The Unknown Angus Wilson: Uncollected Short Stories from the Fifties and After," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring, 1987, pp. 80-97.

In this essay, Stape analyzes a number of Wilson's lesser-known stories. The critic focuses on the incidents from the author's life that contributed to the tales and discusses the manner in which the characters and themes of the stories are reflected in Wilson's subsequent novels.

A number of stories published in the 1950s and excluded from Angus Wilson's three short-story collections throw considerable light on the discovery and development of his distinctive voice and on his exploration of the genre. These early stories published in London newspapers, in periodicals specializing in short fiction, and in thematic anthologies, though they share to a certain extent the tone and themes of those collected in The Wrong Set (1949) and Such Darling Dodos (1950), belong neither in those books nor in...